Betrayal
by Brainless Genius
Summary: Right before his death, Cooper reflects on all the times he's trusted his friends...and all the times they've betrayed him.


**A/N: I realize that I haven't published anything in...quite a long time, so I apologize for that! I'm currently trying to ease myself back into writing, so I decided to write this as a start.**

**On the other hand, this was written on an airplane while I was on extreme lack of sleep. **

When Cooper first entered the jungle, he had found it boring, easy to navigate. Nash and Udesky had been with him, and although he'd been warned about what was on the island, he hadn't entirely believed it.

That is, until he saw it.

The animal was huge, larger than what he could ever have imagined. Cooper was thinking of dinosaurs in the context of their portrayal by the media - slow, stupid animals who only cared about getting from one place to the next. And be certainly wasn't expecting anything larger than a T-rex.

He was wrong, on both counts.

Nash spotted it first, moving among the trees so quietly that none of them saw it until it was 50 feet away. He ordered Cooper and Udesky to stay low and absolutely silent. The dinosaur appeared to have heard Mrs. Kirby's cries from the landing strip, and was heading in that direction.

Right towards them.

Suddenly, it stopped in its tracks and stared dead at them, its gaze cold, calculating. A fraction of a second passed, the dinosaur roared, and all was chaos from that point.

Nothing they tried worked. The animal was simply too large, its skin too thick for bullets to wound it. The dinosaur - he did not know what it was called - was hideous, attacking them with a vengeance. The only way they had survived thus far was its confusion at the gunshots, paired with the convenient nooks and crannies the jungle had to offer, too small for the brute to get at them. Soon, though, it headed toward the voices again - the voices they had sworn to protect.

Regaining the dinosaur's attention, Copper watched in dismay as his two best friends in the world abandoned him, shouting they "needed to assure the others of their safety" and "get Mrs. Kirby to put the megaphone down." Yeah, right. Now it was just him and the dinosaur.

He thought back to when he had first met Nash and Udesky. They had only been kids then, making friends in third grade. Most friends grew apart over time with those circumstances, but the fact that all three of their fathers served in the army allowed them to share a common bond. Of course, it also meant that they moved around often, but somehow they'd all managed to keep in touch. They'd always been able to trust each other, no questions asked.

So why did they desert him now?

He realized, as if in a dream, that he was bleeding, and he slowly became more aware of the pain creeping up his arm. He couldn't remember how it happened, just that one minute there was no pain, and the next, there was.

It began to dawn on him that the plans must be leaving soon, and as he ran through the forest, he made a beeline for the landing strip.

Yes, when Cooper first entered the jungle, he had found it boring and easy to navigate.

Now, it was dense, dark, and unforgiving. He ran, the dinosaur close behind.

When he finally burst out into the light, all he could see was the plane coming straight towards him. Inside, he could see Nash, Udesky, Billy, Dr. Grant, and the Kirbys.

The Kirbys.

He'd first met Amanda Kirby back when she was still Amanda Manat, at church, as he had told Dr. Grant on the plane. She was alone, he had asked her out for coffee, and things just spiralled from there.

A little over a year later, she'd told him she was pregnant, and he was elated. She, however, looked upset, and he couldn't understand why. The baby wasn't his, she said, which made him silently fall apart inside. She then proceeded to explain that she'd been having an affair.

He was the affair.

Paul Kirby had also met him at church, and after the sermon had ended, they'd struck up a conversation. Amanda had joined in, and although he didn't know the two were in a relationship, he now felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.

Paul never really had any chance at wealth, with a small company inherited from his father. Cooper knew this because Udesky often borrowed Paul's satellite phone. Eventually, Cooper had gotten sick of the ringtone, and he asked Udesky to please make it stop. Udesky (as was usual for him) over-explained, providing Cooper with the knowledge about Paul's trade.

When it all came down to one thing, Paul and Cooper were enough alike to be good friends. Cooper, too, had followed on his father's footsteps, joining the army when he turned 18.

But Paul's friendship wasn't nearly enough to justify his betrayal - at least, not in Cooper's eyes.

At some point, he had entertained the delusion that maybe, just maybe, the baby was his. Deep down, though, he knew that he was wrong, and Erik was, in fact, a Kirby.

That didn't stop him from feeling protective.

Now , as he tried with all his heart to wave down the plane, begging and pleading with his friends to stop, he realized that he never had much of a chance at all. His friends had used and betrayed him, sold him out for their own personal use. Now he was on the landing strip, tears, blood, and sweat running down his face, and he knew he could never make it, there was too much open space-

Perfect, reigning silence.

-END-

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